There are different ways of dealing with this problem, no one wants horrible rotten tomatoes when they can have a nice juicy crop by taking a few sensible precautions. Clearly the easiest way to avoid diseased soil is to use fresh compost each year which you can achieve by either using a growbag or some other sort of container. Tomatoes will thrive in a standard 12″ plant pot as long as they are watered regularly and fed with a dilute liquid feed once or twice a week, particularly when the fruit starts to develop. Potassium supplements in the form of a high potassium tomato feed can aid the health and development of your plants and will be available from a garden center.

If you leave a space between the compost surface and the top of the pot, you can add more fresh compost as the plant develops and the compost shrinks.

The reason for using 12″ pots is that if the pots are too small the soil and compost mix can see erratic changes in both temperature and moisture, neither are conditions that the tomato plant will enjoy and will almost certainly lead to crop failure. Watering regularly so that the compost remains moist but not saturated is essential and this constant moisture content state is more easily achieved with larger pots. Remember as well that if you are using a growbag of around 40L not to put too many tomato plants per bag, my recommendation is 2 plants per bag and at a stretch perhaps 3 but definitely no more than that if you want decent results and healthy tomatoes.

Also make sure the plants (vine plants) are properly supported with either string, stakes or, more recently, tomato cages. If you are using string or stakes train the plants around them in a clockwise direction. Remove any little side shoots that develop between the main stem and the leaves, this should be done on a daily basis if possible.

When they are flowering you can gently tap the plants to help them pollinate, another option for aiding pollination is to spray with a fine mist of water when conditions are warm and bright. There is a further option of spraying with a hormone setting preparation which you can also get from the garden center, but tomatoes do pollinate quite readily so you shouldn’t really need to do this unless you are having problems.

When the fruit is beginning to ripen try and avoid temperatures over 27C (81F) especially if in a greenhouse where the glass can increase temperatures inside significantly. Potassium supplements in the form of a high potassium tomato feed can aid the health and development of your plants and again will be available from a garden center.

With indeterminate tomato plants you will need to limit the number of trusses that you allow to develop to between 4 and 6 depending on the length of the growing season wherever you are, or whether you are growing tomatoes in the greenhouse or outside.

Always remember to keep temperature and moisture levels constant, erratic changes can cause, flower shedding, blossom end rot, immature fruit fall, split skins, sun scald or blotchy ripening.

*Top Tip* Growers Pride is a great starter tomato for beginners, it is an F1 Hybrid however so best to buy the plant rather than trying to grow yourself from seed.

As a final word on growing tomatoes in containers, especially relevant when you have restricted space, is to do what a lot of people have started to do and that is to create an upside down tomato garden, where your tomato vine plant is planted in a plastic container and then hung upside down so that the vine hangs down instead of growing up a support frame. A little bit gimmicky I think, but then I suppose everyone to their own. I will make sure my next post describes how to do this.

When choosing, one of the most over riding considerations to take into account is what they are going to taste like, after all when you are growing tomatoes at home that is one of the primary reasons for doing so, otherwise you may as well go and get the plastic ones from the supermarket. It’s quite difficult to recommend a variety for taste because everyone’s taste is different but what a lot of people opt for are the Heirloom varieties, mainly because they are as the name suggests an older and more traditional type of tomato which are full of flavour but may not have some of the more modern characteristics built in such as disease resistance.

Talking about disease resistance and to help ensure that you actually get some lovely fruit from your tomato plant it is a good idea to pick a tomato type that has a reasonable level of resistance to disease, especially if you have had trouble in this direction in the past. Check out the seed packets and make sure that they have a natural resistance to fusarium wilt and verticillium, these are two of the most common tomato diseases that they can get from the ground.

How much space you have will determine whether you can go for a determinate or indeterminate variety, the determinate variety as the name suggests grows to a limited size usually a couple of feet to maybe three feet in height then they stop. The indeterminate type are the vine tomatoes and they will just keep going unless you prune them. I actually think that the vine type are better in smaller spaces because you can control them to a size you want and train them where you want them to go whereas with the bush tomato plants they are what they are.

Also the vine plants continue to grow fruit over a longer period as the fruit of each truss ripens. The determinate (bush) variety on the other hand tend to ripen all at once over a relatively short period.

Unless you have a greenhouse the time the fruit takes to mature becomes important, if you are going to start to see frost at the beginning of October you need to be all done by then. So it is better to go for early maturing varieties in this case.

Something like Sun Gold will mature in 65 days or so and are indeterminate so lots of fruit over a longer period.

Beef tomatoes are large and are great for a burger but they do take longer to ripen so you either have to have a long summer or a greenhouse for growing these so that you can protect them from overnight frosts.

At the end of the day tomato selection is a matter of preference and as long as you actually end up with tomatoes that you like the taste of then the job is done, so make sure you take into account these factors and you will be sure to soon be enjoying lots of lovely ripe tomatoes.

If you prefer to buy your tomato support frames check out these options available through Amazon.